mpc123 wrote:Anyone tried Akai S-20? I read that it had 16 bit 32 khz, but does it sound good? Also I read that it have some kind of auto chop (which I hoped to be there in my 500, but there isnt any)
What I can tell about sound of 500, when you do all track, all sounds in akai it sounds different, it is more "akai magic" more difference than you can find in drum shot or individual sample, actualy with 500 my tracks sound more like it should sound many
years ago and any VST in Fruity loops cant help me to improve that over the years (I tried lots of them).
It is sounding more like 90s dance tracks sound, more like Prodigy, 92s rave, more like sound I always loved, best for synth samples from tracks, real oldschool rave feel in synth sound which any VST (even samplebased) emulation couldnt bring me. Akai had "something" in it.
And about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAcb_Ey4wyU
2500 vs 500, 2500 sound more like I want, 500 sounds bit bass less, more limited in full bass sound.. maybe somebody left compresor turned on in this little beast?
ehr...prodigy experience was all on W30, typical roland sound (12bit S50/330550), its succesor, the dj70 uses the S750/S770 engine (which engine is pretty much identical to a jd800!!!). Most non sampled sounds from experience are found in the U110/220 pcm's (sound efx) and i believe they were also factory standard sounds coming with the w30. He does have akai samplers but they are used for live. Back in the days he'd load up stuff in 2 S1100's buy i think he's using a z8 now. In addition, he also has an sp1200 but i dont think he ever used it for a track.
S20, 16bit/32khz, cheapo converters, its not bad, it aint good either. The 950 dirth sound is a combo of transpose algorhytmn and good converters (more headroom) which this thing will lack...you're better off getting a remix16 for the fun features+the same S20 engine.
FL has a great sampler built in, not even mentioning slicex, the issue is with the audio interface you're using. You cant really compare but if you must; You might have an 410FW...i have no clue what they cost right now but its cheap, no matter how you look at it. If you were to replace the I/O of the 410 with S1100 converters then they would sound way better. Nowadays that S1100 is also dirt cheap but was the most expensive akai flagship during its release with really, really good converters. If you would look into a solution similar to the s1100's converters these days than you're buying into high-end converters ($4K/8k...whatever). Thats pretty much it, FL and apogee and you'd hear no-one complain about the delivery of FL....
Back to the mpc500, the ehr... "bad sound" on the mpc500 is due to the fact that its battery driven meaning that if the mpc500 would have more headroom (as expected with the non-battery driven mpc's) then it would probably drain te battery twice as fast (consider it the other way around, if the 2500 would run on batteries then it could not live up its potential against a 5k). Its not bad sound, but if you're running it through a behringer and amp it up by a behringer, than yeah, it will sound like shit because you'd rather see some discrete gainstage taking care of the lack thereof. Bass is less, its outputs are to soft... I've heard this argument so many times and its a matter of taking the right perspective...
I always reply with the same answer; "dude, hook it up to the valve pa system...loudest mpc on the planet!".
Anyway, imo, this is a bs topic, there are always differences in sound but this is from capturing the inputs...not the output. The case with differences in sound from the output are logical and easy to point out...24bit samplers....16bit samplers, 96khz or 44/48khz and thats aside from akai samplers opposed to emu (only akai made 24bit samplers). 12 bit samplers saturate in a nice fashion but they lack the snr/noisefloor found in the 24/96 samplers meaning less details, less dynamics. There is no magic, there are different ad/da oems though and there's the 80's ...and technological breakthroughs in the 80's aswell (sigma delta). The S1100 was the first akai to use the high end sigma delta converters, S1000 still uses the older akai technology and many will still say that the S1000 still pounds out a nasty output but the quality difference will appear when transposing. Why arent some of the newer samplers comparable to the likes of the S1100...because technology in the 80's also introduced more ways to integrate cirquitry architecture onto a smaller surface. The downside to this is that the technological advancement did not imply better quality, but cheaper production instead. Samplers only improved production methods and oem's sought for improvements in regards to quality in dsp based solutions, just implement as much as possible in as less as possible. You'll find the real quality in sample playback, basically load or record a sample and playback. The other quality is in the manner how the material is treated by the OS, in regards to this fact you could say that an EIIIx would sound better than a S1100...untill you start transposing, the coherence just aint that good. EIII is also good example, a sampler built with high end component simply because there was no other way to manufacture a high end sampler. Then production methods created the option exploit cheaper, fastger and created the ESI32, same OS basically and i believe the same 2x128 oversampling converters (sigma-delta), but no balanced outputs (10 output instead of 4), optional sp/dif instead aes/ebu and a less powerfull dsp meaning it supports less pro options (besides being slower).
Anyway, i can go on in comparing samplers but why one is better than the other is captain obvious, read the specs and do the math.
talking about magnetic shielding.. Altough Ive had no problems during the three years Ive had 'em. Exept once the right tweeter didnt work but it got fixed by re-powering up the speakers.
